Friday, January 18, 2013
stuffaboutminneapolis:

Guindon Cartoon, 1977
“Sometimes I ask myself, what would Mary Tyler Moore do in my situation?”

Please more slippers like this in cartoons please.

stuffaboutminneapolis:

Guindon Cartoon, 1977

“Sometimes I ask myself, what would Mary Tyler Moore do in my situation?”

Please more slippers like this in cartoons please.

Monday, December 3, 2012
Public history and memory invents itself through the popular chewing and swallowing of the culture. That’s how I learned about AIM from a novel rather than walking up and down the streets where it was founded. That’s why children will learn about the 13th Amendment and American political process from Steven Spielberg for the next 50 years. Ask most young, white Minneapolitans about the history of 15th and Franklin Avenue and they will quote you a Lifter Puller song. Louise Erdrich, who just won the National Book Award, weaves a complex history of the area, and her books are probably just as popular as This American Life. But you can’t link to an immensely detailed and subtext-heavy novel. The one true white discovery is still all the rage. I’m in the process of writing another essay for Successes and Failures, but this week I got distracted and wrote three pages on This American Life and the public history of American Indians in Minnesota. Do you want to read it? Sign up here.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Other things that happened this week: I voted no twice because I believe in human rights.

Other things that happened this week: I voted no twice because I believe in human rights.

Thursday, September 6, 2012 Monday, July 30, 2012
There’s no escaping Scandinavian heritage in the Twin Cities. At every turn, there’s a billboard for Norwegian language-immersion camp or a “Drool if You’re Finnish” baby bib for sale. Well, that’s an exaggeration. Y’all have fun with this. I’m on deadline.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
I wrote a piece about Northern Spark. It’s not a preview so much as a contextual evaluation, or something like that. Critique? I don’t know what to call it. It represents my mixed feelings about the event well, I think, and I got to compare it to the Fiberglass Animals In Cities trend, as well as the Main Street Electrical Parade, and cite Debord in the process.
It’s not really criticism, but it’s my first real in-depth attempt at writing for a publication that might share an audience with Cabinet. If you hit up my suggestions, read Sheila Regan’s preview in City Pages (my admiration for Regan trumps dislike for City Pages), and go see the choir-off at 9pm at the Walker, on which I couldn’t get enough info for the preview, I think you should be pretty set for the night, which will be fun, no matter what.
Anyway, if you like public art, community art, art criticism, or the word “coastie,” I’d suggest clicking on the above.

I wrote a piece about Northern Spark. It’s not a preview so much as a contextual evaluation, or something like that. Critique? I don’t know what to call it. It represents my mixed feelings about the event well, I think, and I got to compare it to the Fiberglass Animals In Cities trend, as well as the Main Street Electrical Parade, and cite Debord in the process.

It’s not really criticism, but it’s my first real in-depth attempt at writing for a publication that might share an audience with Cabinet. If you hit up my suggestions, read Sheila Regan’s preview in City Pages (my admiration for Regan trumps dislike for City Pages), and go see the choir-off at 9pm at the Walker, on which I couldn’t get enough info for the preview, I think you should be pretty set for the night, which will be fun, no matter what.

Anyway, if you like public art, community art, art criticism, or the word “coastie,” I’d suggest clicking on the above.

Sunday, January 22, 2012 Thursday, December 1, 2011

Is there a good guide to MN Etsy shops? What are some MN Etsy shops you like?

Not stuff that’s dripping with Minnesota twee, just good stuff that I’d actually want to buy another person.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Supporting Local Businesses Means Supporting Your Local Internet

The terms “community” and “neighborhoods” can be kinda funny. Sometimes community-run media gives people jobs and/or training that can be used to enhance the local understand of how media is made.

And sometimes those terms are employed by outlets that are designed to profit from media trends like hyperlocalism. When the money from the community’s output doesn’t go back into the community, it provides little benefit to the actual community. (And if you want to volunteer, local organizations need your talents more than a for-profit based in New York.)

If Minneapolis and St. Paul didn’t already have outstanding community media resources and amazing local Tumblrs, I would have no problem with new companies trying to build that community spirit. But as it stands there are plenty of local places that provide paying jobs (or that are at least attempting it) to those who curate and write news about the Twin Cities; please support them by reading them, by linking them, by supporting their advertisers and sponsors. Here are some:

There are more, so please add to the list. As for one-stop Twin Cities Tumblrs, I’m sure another one of you can provide a list of those, if you don’t already know where to find them.

And then there’s also varied and sundry Patches, as well as several other non-locally based community-oriented sites, which I’m not always a huge supporter of, but at least they pay their writers and editors.

Also, not that the economics of liquor production are anything like the economics of media production (whole ‘nother can o’ worms!), but there is a very nice gin that comes out of Wisconsin called Death’s Door. There’s some free advertising.